


Of Coffee and Tiaras (and a hint of chloroform)

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Series: Coffee and... [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blind Date, F/M, Gwen Jr, M/M, Secret Relationship, nosy friends, they think they're subtle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the hell is discreet about 'I have a date with a guy, but it's not the guy you wanted me to meet, not that I would know that guy because obviously I've never met him, but if I did I wouldn't date him because you're wrong about him being perfect for me'? That has to be the least discreet thing I've ever heard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Coffee and Tiaras (and a hint of chloroform)

Arthur poked it. “It’s squishy.”

Merlin laughed and looked down at the little face peeking out of the pink bundle. “That’s because she was just born, you prat.” Quickly but gently, he handed her back to her exhausted looking mother. “She’s beautiful, Gwen.”

Gwen preened and Lance was smug. “So…?” Gwen prompted, even as she stared down at her daughter, at her very own first born. “Now that you’ve met what do you think?”

Arthur sighed and crossed his arms. “Honestly? She’s a little too young for my tastes. And she’s not really my type, what with being a she and all.”

“Oi!” Merlin whispered harshly. “What kind of idiot are you? She was talking about me, you clot pole.”

Arthur’s nostril’s flared. “Yes, I know that, Merlin. Doesn’t mean I can’t tease a little bit, does it?”

“Not if it means you’re going to be hitting on Gwen Junior!”

“Elizabeth,” Gwen interjected with forced calmness. “And if you two… men can’t resolve some of that sexual tension, I’m going to get Lance to tie you together and lock you in a supply closet until New Year’s.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “Now, go get coffee or whatever it is you two do while pretending you don’t know who the bloody hell you’re going out with because you’re not fooling anyone.”

“Caffeine withdrawal,” Lance whispered with a wince.

“I’ll tie you up with them,” Gwen threatened. Merlin and Arthur slipped out of the room as quickly as possible. “Idiots.”

-

“So, they know. How do they know?”

“Don’t look at me like that Merlin, I didn’t bloody well tell them.”

“Well somebody had to! I thought we were being rather discreet about the whole thing.”

Arthur stared at Merlin with pursed lips. “What the hell is discreet about I have a date with a guy, but it’s not the guy you wanted me to meet, not that I would know that guy because obviously I’ve never met him, but if I did I wouldn’t date him because you’re wrong about him being perfect for me? That has to be the least discreet thing I’ve ever heard.”

Merlin huffed a sigh and blew on his steaming cup of hospital coffee. “Oh, so you were on the phone when I told Gwen about our first date?”

“She had you on speaker. And technically it was our second date.” He paused and then said thoughtfully, “Unless, of course, you kiss anyone who buys you coffee?”

“Yeah, okay, we can go with second date.”

Arthur smirked triumphantly and pulled Merlin in closer. “So, what does a guy have to do get some action?”

Merlin snorted. “Please. It’s only been seven months, surely you can hold out for a little while longer…?”

“That’s it. I’m telling Gwen.”

-

Lance looked dead on his feet. Merlin grimaced when he walked into the bar for the third time that day. He groaned. “Elizabeth has figured out that if she cries, she becomes queen and we her servants.”

“Hmm, I think that’s what babies are supposed to do.”

Lance lifted his head. “Also, I need an update. Please tell me someone got buggered?”

Merlin smiled tightly. “Well, my neighbor’s dog got buggered by a thermometer at the vet. Does that help?”

“Hmm, no. No, not really. We have to live vicariously through other people for a while until Gwen gets birth control. Something about being really receptive during nursing or whatever. I wasn’t really listening.”

Merlin laughed and handed Lance a cappuccino. “Brush your teeth before you go home so Gwen doesn’t make you sleep on the couch again.”

“I love you so much right now.”

Merlin nodded. “That’s what I’m here for. But anyway, I think it might depend on the woman and her girly reproductive things. My one friend Will, in high school, ended up knocking up his ex-girlfriend. It was supposed to be a one-time thing, but go figure, that’s how things happen. Well, he read online about it being safe to be unsafe after a certain amount of time but… Let me just say now that the last time I heard from him he was married with four kids and one on the way.”

Lance looked a little nauseous. “Well, at least I have a tale to bring home.”

-

Gwen enjoyed the way Arthur gushed over the two-hundred-billion-eight-hundred-eighty-seven-thousand-five-hundred-forty-eight photos of her daughter. She was just so proud she had to show her off to everybody. She’d been a little hesitant at first with Uther, but as soon as he’d started talking about what an overdramatic drama queen Arthur had been as a child and how that should have alerted him to the fact that Arthur would rather wear a tiara than a proper crown, she knew she’d never regret it.

Besides, now she knew what to get Arthur for Christmas.

“Oh, God, this makes me want one of my own,” Arthur sighed as he tried to sneak away with a handful of pictures. He didn’t get very far. “Do you mind if I steal her away every now and then?”

Gwen watched him suspiciously for a moment as she thumbed through what she’d taken from his jacket pocket. “I suppose, since I don’t really have to worry about you using her to pick up chicks like my brother does.”

Arthur shrugged. “Well, it’s a good strategy, but puppies work better. Besides, I don’t think Merlin would take too kindly to that.”

“Oh? Does he finally have you whipped?”

Arthur scoffed. “Hardly! I’m starting to think he has some kind of iron chastity belt that he’s not telling me about.”

Gwen laughed at that. “Oh, yes, and you’re some kind of idiot-hero who runs around in green tights attacking drunk rabbis and then tries to get killed by make-believe ghostly pirates.”

Arthur opened his mouth, confused. “Isn’t that from two different movies?”

Gwen shook her head. “That’s only what they want you to think. See, in truth, Robin Hood couldn’t figure out how to undo Maid Marian’s chastity belt so he ran away to become a stable boy for a girl named Buttercup and changed his name to Wesley. Since everything always has to have a happy ending though, they just split the two stories and made them into two separate entities. Romantic, huh?”

“…They put you back on caffeine, didn’t they?”

Gwen smiled. “I love coffee.”

“I’m telling Lance you’re having an affair.”

“I’ll tell Merlin you want to bugger him to the moon and back.”

“…he already knows.”

“Then I guess we’re even.”

-

Arthur growled low over the phone. “Why don’t you want me coming over? Are you hiding someone else under the bed?”

Merlin suspiciously paused. “No. He won’t fit. Believe me, I’ve tried, but unless I hack him into pieces, he pretty much stays on the couch.”

“Wait, what?”

Merlin sighed. “Gwaine? My roommate? I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about him. He has this disease of the brain that makes him chronically single.”

Arthur laughed, suddenly relieved. He was so not going to examine why that was so. “Right, right. You mean Gwaine the roommate that flirts with anything that moves.”

“Yes. See? I knew I told you about him before.”

There was nothing but static on the line for a couple of minutes while Arthur was plotting something devious. “Say, now that we’re technically not single anymore, doesn’t that mean we have to hook up one of our single friends or something?”

Merlin frowned. “I don’t think it’s a conventional standard but I don’t suppose it could hurt. Look what happened with us.”

Neither of them decided to realize that Gwen had natural talents that they didn’t possess, and that she had a lot more experience in hooking up her single friends than they did.

-

Gwaine and Morgana stared at each other, sizing the other up like wrestlers in high school or wolves in the wild while Merlin and Arthur stood by, watching the interaction. There was some kind of silent communication going on, words sent with eyes and winks and possibly Morse code.

“So,” Morgana began, popping a hip and purposefully ignoring her so-called friends, “there’s this bar…”

Gwaine practically jumped. “I’m in.”

Arthur and Merlin had no idea the level of evil they had just unleashed.

-

“They seriously need to get laid,” Morgana said, sipping at something of a dark amber color.

Gwaine nodded encouragingly. “Merlin’s room locks from the outside,” he supplied helpfully. “He doesn’t know I have the key.”

“I have… well, it’s not chloroform, but it works the same way.”

“This could work. Knock ’em out, strip ’em down, and lock ‘em in the room together. I approve.”

“Great, now here’s what we do…”

-

Arthur groaned and stretched, and then froze when he heard Merlin moan beneath him. He didn’t remember falling asleep on top of anybody, let alone Merlin of all people, but he’d had nights like that. Granted, not since college…

“Oh, God, stop moving.”

Arthur blinked down at the flushed face, the parted lips, the bare collar bones and down… “Oh my God, we’re naked. What the hell did we do last night?”

“Not enough, apparently.” Merlin tried not to shift but lying in the same spot for an undisclosed amount of time was starting to make his bum numb. Shifting, however, seemed to be an unwise decision as it enticed other parts of his anatomy that were better left alone when in a drug-altered state of mind. “I think it was Morgana and Gwaine.”

Arthur growled, but he didn’t know if it was because of the growing hardness pressing against his thigh or the thought that he had been right about Morgana all along. “I knew she was evil as soon as she stole my tiara and proclaimed herself a queen.”

“I don’t even want to know…”

“I have an idea. A little less talk and a lot more action, perhaps?”

Merlin laughed and shoved at Arthur’s shoulder. “How much more cliché can you get? A gay man with a tiara? Really? Did you wear a dress as well?”

Arthur actually had the decency to look affronted. “I’ll have you know I didn’t. That was all Leon.”

“Well, that’s a shame. If you wore dresses, I could simply lift your skirts and…”

Arthur pressed his mouth against Merlin’s. “If you ever tell anyone I’ll kill you.”

“Oh, just shut up and kiss me!”

Arthur was more than happy to oblige. He pressed against Merlin and moaned. They twisted and writhed together until they were both ready to explode. Arthur huffed in exasperation when Merlin pushed him back.

“You don’t suppose they left any condoms, do you?”

-

Gwaine frowned as Morgana took her turn to flirt with the bartender for free drinks. “Why do I feel like we forgot something?”


End file.
